


Unleash Your Creativity

by wrack



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Art Supplies... IN SPACE!, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Impromptu Art Therapy, ManDadlorian, Parenthood, Questionable Clickbait Article Advice, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27330952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrack/pseuds/wrack
Summary: Din frowned. The silver-green smudge stared back up at him, revealing little. “It’s a self-portrait?”“Must be.” Cara hitched one shoulder in a shrug. “Lucky we’re chasing down a Jedi for him, not an artist. Doesn’t look like he’s got much of a future there.”“You don’t know that,” Din said, feeling unaccountably defensive. “He’s just a baby.”Din decides to give the Child an opportunity to explore his artistic side. With mixed results.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin, Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin & Cara Dune
Comments: 24
Kudos: 289





	Unleash Your Creativity

Din hadn’t gone looking for the article. The holonet, following some unfathomable algorithm, had spat it out amid a chaos of search results about life as a solo parent. Squeezed between an opinion piece on the ethics of using droid nannies and a 20,000-character rant by someone named ABCWing, _5 Good Reasons To Encourage Your Child to Express Their Natural Creativity_ had seemed innocuous by comparison. He’d tapped on it more out of curiosity than anything else. The advice had been written by, for, and about humans. Who knew if it would even apply to the kid?

It had stuck with him, though. Stuck with him long enough that the next time he passed through a trading post, he kept an eye out for art materials the kid might be able to use. He didn’t strike iron on that planet, or the one after – but then he set down on some hollowed-out asteroid with no name and no legitimate star chart entry, trying to shake a tail they’d picked up three worlds ago. Tucked away right at the back of the market was a stall selling a rainbow of paint colours inside and outside the human-visible spectrum, and hidden behind _those_ was a little packet of what the proprietor had told him were art supplies.

“Crayons,” she’d said, tapping the corner of the box. “Chalk. Permanent marker. Good for long hyperspace journeys.”

“Good for a child? A baby?”

The tentacles around her mouth twitched, curling inward. “Yes. Of course.”

Maybe he should have asked more questions, but he was already caught up in wondering whether he should have mentioned children at all. He’d managed to barter her down without once asking what the pirate crews who frequented this place would ever want with that much glittery paint. Best to let some mysteries lie.

 _Encourage your child to express their natural creativity_. No instructions on how he was supposed to go about that. More and more, he got the impression that even needing to ask meant he was doing it wrong. He tried offering the crayons, followed by the chalk, and then – with some trepidation – the permanent marker. The kid stared and burbled, but made no attempt to grab. After a while, Din gave in and wedged the supplies into the first available bit of onboard storage space. Maybe he was too young.

-

“Your _face_ ,” said Cara, as soon as she’d stopped laughing. “Your helmet. Look at it.” She dug around in the pockets of her gear for a moment, shrugged, and unsheathed her combat knife. It was clean enough to chop vegetables with; the flat gleamed like a mirror. Din peered into the brightness, squinting through his visor as she turned the blade back and forth. Not a very sharp reflection, but he got the idea. There was some sort of green scribble on his helmet, zigzagging across both cheeks and up onto the forehead.

The baby, who hadn’t stirred since Din got up, cracked one eye open as if he knew they were talking about him. Seemingly satisfied, he closed it again and went back to sleep. If he’d been awake all night drawing – well, that might be where the uncharacteristic tiredness had come from. Didn’t explain how he’d managed to sneak out of bed, retrieve the crayons, and express his natural creativity all over Din’s helmet without disturbing him or Cara, but at least he wasn’t sick.

“I guess he thinks you look like him under there,” Cara said. “Or he wishes you did. Or something. Kids are weird.” This last was said in the same tone he’d heard her use to talk about a make of speeder she didn’t like.

Din frowned. The silver-green smudge stared back up at him, revealing little. “It’s a self-portrait?”

“Must be.” She hitched one shoulder in a shrug. “Lucky we’re chasing down a Jedi for him, not an artist. Doesn’t look like he’s got much of a future there.”

“You don’t know that,” Din said, feeling unaccountably defensive. “He’s just a baby.”

Had the Armourer ever dealt with a situation like this before? He imagined contacting her for advice, let the scenario play out in his head for a little while, and dismissed it when the sense of creeping horror got to be too much. For want of other options, he pulled up the same holonet search that had kicked off this mess and keyed in _how to get permanent marker off beskar._

Several increasingly desperate searches and three attempts at a makeshift cleaning solution later, he found himself leaning back in the pilot’s chair while Cara scrubbed at his visor. Much to his relief, the cloth seemed to be getting greener with each pass. He’d take it, even if it meant she’d feel justified in bringing it up over and over again for the rest of their working lives together.

She didn’t laugh quite as hard when the baby tried his talents out on her own gear next morning. She just stood there, glaring at her vambrace as if she hoped to burn the chalky mess away by sheer force of will. From Din’s perspective, it was a small purple bruise with toothy white streaks radiating out from the edge. Easy enough to clean, he thought. Nowhere near the state of his helmet, which still had a smattering of green flecks around the visor.

“It’ll come off,” he said, when the silence had stretched out long enough to make even him uncomfortable. “We might not even need –“

“It’s an Alderaanian plant,” Cara said, quieter than he’d ever heard her. Breathy, he might have thought, if she’d been anyone else. “A weed, I guess. You find them growing at altitude in parts of the north. When you step on them, they explode and the spores puff everywhere.”

“He didn’t mean,” Din started, and then couldn’t think what to say after that. Maybe it was a complete sentence.

“Yeah, well. He needs to – never mind. Forget it.” She stalked off to the ‘fresher, which was the only real option if you wanted to stalk off anywhere on the Razor Crest. The child watched her go, ears drooping so low they were almost parallel with his arms. Then he blinked at Din.

“I know,” Din said. He did that almost without thinking, these days, just carrying on one-sided conversations whenever and wherever. The child didn’t protest when he began to gather up the scattered crayons. He didn’t even make a sound when the little box went into the weapons locker, wedged in tight behind a pack of EMPs. By the time Cara reemerged with a damp cloth, Din had another batch of the solution ready and waiting in the middle of the floor. If her scrubbing was rough enough to take a little of the paint off as well, neither one of them commented on it.

For a couple of weeks, it seemed like that would be it for the creativity experiment. Din dropped Cara back with Greef Karga, her impromptu leave having come to an end. It was hard to say who among the three of them was more relieved. Most of the time, he got the feeling she was conflicted about laying down roots planetside; this time around, she stalked off the ramp as if she never wanted to set foot on a starship again. When she was out of sight, the kid started to whimper; the worry that sparked in Din didn’t ease at all after liftoff. Still, their lives went on, as dull and routine as they were ever likely to get.

One morning, parked up in the void between icy Imei and its moons, Din rolled out of bed and heard a piercing _crack_.

He looked down, fearing the worst. There was a starburst of red on the floor where he’d trodden. When he lifted his foot, a piece of flimsi fluttered to the floor; the word RED was printed on it in large, helpful letters. He performed a little twist and flick to rid himself of the remaining crayon pieces, grateful all the while that there were no witnesses other than the baby. The baby, who’d somehow managed to retrieve the supplies from the weapons locker without his noticing. He’d have to do something about that. When he glanced at the cradle, the kid was just sitting there with one ear angled toward him. Catching Din’s eye, he let out an unmistakable giggle.

“Go ahead and laugh,” Din said, without heat. Beyond the mess, stray crayons lay strewn around their sleeping space; at the epicentre, he saw a swirl of colour. Abstract, he thought, until he crouched down to get a better look. There were people caught up in the maelstrom. His eyes, seeking a reference point, were drawn to a black T-bar surrounded by blue scribble. The helmet was perched right on top of a humanoid stick figure’s near-nonexistent shoulders; there was a dark smudge in the figure’s hands that had to be a blaster. Blue squiggles led from the muzzle to another stick figure in a long brown dress or robe. That was where the red crayon came in. There couldn’t have been much left even before Din had crushed it into shards; the child had really gone off with it, turning the floor around the brown-clad figure into a veritable lake of blood. It would have been impressive if it hadn’t been quite so disturbing. He tried to remember if he’d ever mentioned past Jedi-Mandalorian conflicts within earshot. Those were some of the first stories he’d had hammered into him after the bunker, but they weren’t ones he felt like passing on. The child was a Jedi, sort of, even if his people were all dead.

In a flash, Din realised he’d got it wrong. He knew what the picture was.

When he turned around, the baby was pulling himself up on the edge of his cradle. This time, he didn’t giggle. His eyes were very bright. It was easy to forget his actual age; easier still when there were red crayons underfoot first thing in the morning. Could he remember the fall of the Republic? Had he been there, seen it? What little Din knew about Jedi abilities suggested he might not even have needed to be present in person.

It all came back to that damn article. The fourth bullet point had gone on and on about _processing emotion via art._ At the time, Din had dismissed it; he’d turned out fine, hadn’t he, despite a distinct lack of people in his life encouraging him to _process_ all over sheets of flimsi. But maybe it was helping the kid. Maybe he’d been trying to sort through pictures too big for one so little, get them out of his head and onto a flat plane where they couldn’t sneak up on him at odd moments. In light of that, his drawing the flower on Cara’s gear made sense. He just hadn’t realised she was the only person in the galaxy less interested in processing emotion via art than Din himself.

Not so long ago, he wouldn’t have known what the baby meant when he leaned forward in his basket and let out a little coo. Now, his feet took him over to the cradle without bothering to check in with his conscious mind first. When he scooped the kid up, a fragment of green crayon fell out of his sleepwear. The kid let out a happy squeal and squirmed, trying to reach for it. He felt almost weightless in Din’s arms.

Later, Din made up several more bottles of the cleaning solution. The art supplies stayed on board.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Unleash Your Creativity [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28578012) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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